Time Management Tips in Practice

One of my least favourite courses to run has always been Time Management. At the beginning of my career I tried to meet this request by running a one day course and it was always a disappointment to me and the participants. This does not mean that time management is not an issue but just that imposing a standardised solution on people fails to meet the high expectations people have about training.

These days I focus on individualised approaches to time management. For many people what is needed is a fundamental look at their priorities and approach to time, this requires an understanding of psychology beyond the “if you think you can do you will” approach.

Other people need to consider tips and techniques, to have time to try these out and to reflect on the usefulness of these approaches. This means I am always alert to new time management tips and some of these I try out myself. Here are the two most recent tips I have been testing out:

Weekly Planner

My work involves a lot of planning and I used a to do list to keep track of the tasks. I have now supplemented this with a white board with the next 5 working days in a table format. I can then write on the board the events/meetings that I have in my diary and schedule time to plan for these and also to plan for other projects.

It is a simple visual idea which helps me to see ahead into my immediate future and ensures that I am meeting all my deadlines effectively. I like the focus that it gives me and the way it helps to reduce my panic when I am about to move into a busy delivery phase.

Don’t Switch on your Email

The idea of switching off your email is something I have incorporated into my practice for many years. I have often switched the email off when concentrating on particular tasks to avoid distracting my creative flow. The new tip I am focusing on is to do a task first before switching on the email. This is a great tip because it means you have achieved a task before taking on lots of new urgent tasks generated by your email. This works for me because it keeps me focused on the important but not necessary urgent tasks and avoids me getting sucked into my email at the cost of other things.

As I said at the beginning, time management is such an individualised subject that these tips may be of no use to you because of the unique challenges you face in your role. So it would be great to share some thoughts here:

• what tips work for you?
• What ideas have you taken from others and incorporated into your daily routines?
• Why do these ideas work for you?

Making and Influencing Change: Beyond the Shiny Things Approach

One of the disappointing aspects of my profession as a trainer is how so many in our profession (and I include myself at times) get excited by new shiny techniques that promise us to fix one of the big problems in organisations…how do you get people to change behaviour? We seek out techniques that will work quickly and fix the problem so that our organisations can run more smoothly. From an initial pilot study a project can quickly be picked up and implemented across a whole organisation and then a few years later it is forgotten about as the desired change in behaviour has not happened.

It was in this context that I picked up Timothy Wilson’s book “Redirect. The surprising new science of psychological change” http://www.amazon.co.uk/Redirect-Surprising-Science-Psychological-Change/dp/1846142296

The book is a really detailed but readable overview of some of the latest research on various group and individual interventions designed to create positive change. Wilson outlines why many of these interventions have failed, even though they seem at first to make perfect sense.

An example which stood out for me was the “Free Book” project. The idea is that children get rewarded for reading by having a prize that they will get once they have read a certain number of books. For children who were not keen on reading this had a desired effect. Whilst the reward was in place they did read more. But once the reward system stopped their reading went back down to previous levels. The really scary thing was that for children who already did plenty of reading the scheme did not increase their rate of reading but when the scheme was over their level of reading dropped right off! By putting a reward system in place the children had started seeing reading as something that they had to be motivated to do by external rewards and no longer something that they valued themselves.

I reflected on this in terms of the myriad of performance bonus systems that I have seen implemented in the various organisations I have worked in. Many managers I work with love these incentive schemes as they feel that they are able to reward good behaviour with a positive outcome. If you scratch the surface then you quickly realise that all these schemes are doing is introducing a mechanical way of getting us to “do the right thing”. Once the reward changes (and how many incentive schemes are ever that good in a recession?) then the motivation to do the right thing is no longer there.

The key solution that was recommended from the research was something that individuals could easily implement themselves – the story editing techniques. These are defined by Wilson as “a set of techniques designed to redirect people’s narrative about themselves and the social world in a way that leads to lasting changes in behaviour” (p.11, 2011).

You can read more about the story editing technique in this interview with Timothy Wilson

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-to-improve-your-life-with-story-editing

If you are a trainer or change consultant who is bored of the shiny things you might find the book as useful as I did in promoting a more reflective and research based approach to intervening to influence change in organisations.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Redirect-Surprising-Science-Psychological-Change/dp/1846142296

How to Engage your team without footballing millions!

I am a fan of Guiseley AFC a team that plays in the UniBond First Division. The players turn up for traning and to play games for an amazing sum of £100 a week! Their manager is not able to engage by huge bonus payments or by a complicated internal promotion system. What seems to engage the players is the quality of the manager and the team environment which is created.

At a club like Guiseley it is going to be the little things that will make a difference and sometimes this gets lost in some of the work on engaging employees. What interests me is not big bold employee engagement programmes produced by an organisational development consultant but the tiny things that managers do day to day with their teams to create an environment which is engaging and supportive.

This quote always focuses the mind of managers I work with:

“Over 70% of people leave their jobs because of the way they are led.” Norman Drummond, Motivational Speaker

So what can managers do to create a work place that encourages engagement. Recent research by Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer collected diary entries of employees in a variety of companies. The diary enteries were used to map the relationship between the individual’s mood and the activities at work. The conclusions were that little things made a big and lasting difference. The small wins were important, these are some small wins that I have observed making a difference in workplaces I have been involved in as an employee or as a freelance trainer.

3 Small Wins for Engagement

Listening to complaints and responding

People moan all the time and as a manager it is easy to dismiss this as “just moaning” but if you really listen you will start to pick up themes about what really irritates people. Right now a big issue is the difference between words and actions. A lot of companies are focusing on keep costs down and have not been doing any wage rises. People get it, but what does not make sense is when they see money being wasted by the top managers on a bonding event at an expensive hotel.

Easter Eggs and Ice-Creams

I can remember being thrilled to find an Easter Egg on my desk from my boss one morning when I got to work. It wasn’t the value of the gift but just the unexpected nature of it. Likewise the ice-creams one of the managers popped out to get one really hot day (and they do happen sometimes in Leeds)

Training, Coaching and Investment

Giving people the chance to develop their skills, and I don’t mean just running a lot of generic training courses. It is about really taking time to find out what people need to learn and finding interesting ways to help them learn it. One of the best customer service training I delivered involved sending people round the shops and services of Leeds for 2 hours and then asking them to present their findings about what they had learnt about customer service to our management team. This bit of training costs nothing, just a bit of imagination from your training team, and the willingness to trust that your employees will use the opportunity wisely.

Banish Boring Training

Banish Boring Training Sessions

One of the areas of my work that I love the most is when I meet a trainer who says that they have a programme to design that is on a really challenging topic which they are finding hard to bring to life. A recent example I am working on is Assessing Credit Risk in Professional Practice. I can tell that you are already looking excited about this topic! You probably want to sign up now for me to run the session for your team. But just in case this topic doesn’t fill you with heart felt joy then read on and see how you might approach a seemingly dull subject like this.

If you are already excited and want to book a place check out my clients website!

http://www.cmlawltd.com/contact-us.php

The main challenge that the trainer faces is resisting the feeling that face to face sessions must be used to explain the legislation and guidance. Face to face time is too precious to waste by verbalising what would work as a set of hand-outs or a self-explanatory slide show. We have to move away from the idea that we have to verbalise stuff for it to be learning. I can read a lot quicker than you can talk so just let me get on with the reading or give me an audio podcast to listen to. Please don’t just stand there talking at me!

There are ways you can use the time with people in a room so much more effectively than talking at them..

Tip 1: Separate background knowledge from discussion and stimulation

• Provide in advance a set of self- explanatory Powerpoint slides to work as a slide show. Avoid using lots of bullets, try using different visuals to bring this material to life.
• Create an attractive detailed written guide to the legislation and guidance.
• Create on line learning questionnaires to check knowledge before or after.

Tip 2: Engage people with the topic

• Its about hearts and minds so find reasons for people to listen. I once used real press releases about breaches in data protection to get people to realise how serious it can be when it all goes wrong.
• Run a face to face group session which encourages participants to discuss a range of different scenarios and to explore the consequences of breaches in the legislation.
• Work with the group to generate some tips to create a check list to use when assessing risk
• Create some fact cards using the information in your hand-out pack and get participants to use these cards to assess typical situations they may face. An example I created for the credit management course was selecting the best search to do when your organisation has no budget for credit checking.

Tip 3: Brief Everyone about the Training

• Make sure everyone in the organisation knows about the training and what you are planning to cover. This will help to ensure that the right people attend and that they know why they are attending the training.
• In your publicity talk about the benefits of attending the training, in the case of credit management it will save your organisation taking on a client who never pays their bill!

The most important thing is about the commitment of the leadership to the training, leaders can have a big influence on training being seen as more than just a “one hit, big tick” event. Effective leaders will make sure that the training becomes part of the way that things are done and provides a safe place for practice and follow up to happen. The trainer can do wonderful tricks to make most topics come alive but if the training is not taken seriously in the organisation then there is no return on the investment and this must be the most boring message for organisations to get!

If having read this you want to attend a programme on Credit Risk Assessment for Chambers and Law Firms then you can book a place at

http://www.cmlawltd.com/contact-us.php

www.bellthompson.co.uk

The Only Way is Ethics

*thanks to Bill Moody for this great title!

I have been working a module on business ethics for a client and have been researching materials on business ethics. I have a copy of the “Good Business- Ethics at work” which is produced by the Quakers and Business Group.  I confess to not having studied this with as much vigour as I should, especially as I am actually a Quaker! I have found it to a very challenging guide and am finding lots of gems to help with the leadership module.

The first section is about honesty and integrity and this seems so relevant today as organisations attempt to shore up practices to ensure that a HackGate incident doesn’t happen to them.

The section begins with advice and then queries which are designed to encourage individuals to reflect and review their own practice.

Honesty and Integrity

Advice

The most important word to remember in all business dealings is ‘integrity’. Integrity is essential to developing trust; we know that a person is acting with integrity when he is not moved by opportunist or self-seeking impulses and we can trust his response to a total situation. Integrity involves being open honest, truthful and consistent with your beliefs in all your business dealings.

The whole of business requires trust, faith and goodwill. In the emerging digital economy, establishing trust is a critical factor for success.

Queries                                      

• Are you honest and truthful in all you say and do?
• If pressure is brought upon you to lower your standard of integrity are you prepared to resist it?
• Do you do what you promise, even if it just to return a phone call?

One of the pressures on my integrity is that I am successful at running training workshops but I know that the return on investment on these is poor unless the organisation really embed the learning. Do I refuse to take on training projects unless there is embedding included or do I leave that to my clients to wake up to the waste of learning that goes on? What about you, what do you say about the dilemmas you face and the pressures on your integrity in your world?

Can we learn leadership lessons from the Tour de France

Four  Leadership Lessons from the Tour

When the Tour de France came to London I caught the pro-cycling bug and started to grasp the fundamentals of pro-cycling which until that point I had not fully understood. Like all trainers I use stories and anecdotes to explain my learning points. These stories have to be real and have to come from your own passion so it is only natural that the Tour starts to seep into my leadership and trainer development programmes.

Lesson One: It’s All About the Team

Road racing is a great example of team work. Way better than the examples of football we used to wheel out when I worked in the law sector. In a cycling team you have clearly defined roles both on and off the road. One of the fascinating aspects is each team has a team leader and the job of the rest of the team is to protect and support that person so that they can get a win for the rest of the team. This means a real sacrifice of personal ego and also means “burying yourself” in pure physical effort to get your team leader to the front. Listen to Mark Renshaw talking about his role in supporting Mark Cavendish to get to the front. Mark Renshaw could win a sprint but he clearly defines his job is to support Cavendish and Mark Cavendish will always talk about how the team made it possible for him to achieve his win. This article from the sports Guardian outlines these roles

Tour de France 2011: Inside the Team HTC-Highroad engine room  http://bit.ly/q8QarF

Lesson Two: Support Staff are Essential

The domestiques are a bit like our admin teams in business. They do the jobs which are essential for the smooth running of the operation. They work incredibly hard to provide water and supplies at the right time and place. The difference is that in Pro-Cycling there are no plans to cut the domestiques! The admin team in cycling is not seen as a soft cut option as it is in business. They recognise that without the support of the domestiques the team leaders would not be able to achieve their race wins because they rely on this backroom support to do their job effectively.

Lesson Three: Observational Coaching and Feedback is Key

During the race the riders are given constant observation about performance of their team members and other teams. They agree a strategy at the beginning of the day and then update the strategy as the race develops. The coaching and management team see what is happening and adjust the strategy minute by minute. There is constant follow-up on the plans and how these were implemented by  the riders.

Lesson Four: Set and Monitor your Ethical Standards

Pro-cycling has had a dubious ethical background with high levels of cheating by doping and other methods. This caused challenges for teams finding sponsorship. Now many of the teams such as Garmin, HTC High Road and Sky have established a clear team ethical code which defines expectations of the team members and creates a culture where a cyclist knows that any attempts to use any drugs is just not acceptable. The equivalent of a phone hacking scandal is unlikely to happen in contemporary cycling because the team managers have set a clear code, monitor the team against the code and make the consequences of code violation really clear. Team managers do not write an ethical code and then ignore it.

So 4 lessons, can we learn something from the model? Is sport ever relevant to the organisational world?

Presentations and Facilitation

Today I was giving some presentations at the CIPD Human Resource Development exhibition.
It was great to see so many people turn up to these random events. The second presentation I did was on “Influencing Without authority”. There was a massive crowd turned up for this topic which made me reflect about what a massive issue it is for the learning and development profession.
As learning and development facilitators we spend a lot of time influencing in both our groups and with our clients and stakeholders but when did you last focus on this as an area of development.
The session has made me realise that this is something I want to focus more on in my work. It will bring together all the research I have been doing with some really practical insights of influencing from the 20 years of working in learning and development. So watch this space for the development of the ideas around influence.

Customer Journey Mapping: a large group intervention

Customer Journey Mapping

Customer Journey Mapping is a method of identifying the main processes that a customer meets when they have an interaction with an organisation. By spending time mapping the journey a customer actually takes organisations can make changes to their processes which are based on real customer requirements.

Customer Journey Map Sample

There has been a lot of work done in the UK about mapping customer journeys and the Cabinet Office website is a great place to explore different types of journey from the physical journey of customers using Eurostar through to the virtual journey of someone apply to enter the UK as a worker from outside the EU. http://www.cse.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/getDynamicContentAreaSection.do?id=9

My project involved the careers team from a large University in the UK who wanted to know more about what customer journey mapping was about before they could decide whether to use it in practice or not.

The activity I designed was based on some fictional student profiles. These were designed so that the team could explore the journeys of those students who were not current users of the careers service so that they could identify if there were opportunities that were being missed by the service.

Steps in Facilitation 2 – Images and Metaphors

For the second of my mentoring sessions with Preeti I decided to keep with the subject of data collection and explore a more sophisticated technique to the standard Post It sort we had used in the previous session.

The brain dump onto Post It notes works really well when everyone can easily articulate their thoughts but sometimes you want something deeper to be explored and the conventional brain dump can end up being a mass of slightly meaningless unconnected words.

We explored using visual imagery as a trigger to an initial dialogue and looked at how you might use this in different settings. I used a set of visual cards from St Lukes Resources. http://tiny.cc/stlukescards

Steps in Facilitation – Collecting Data

I am mentoring a graduate from the Leeds MBA course who wants to learn about facilitation before she returns to India, so I have 2 months to guide her the skills and tactics of facilitation.

 

 

Our initial thoughts

Our first session was about how to use Post It® notes to generate a range individual responses to a question concerning a team/organisation for example: What causes our meetings to overrun? What is helping employees to feel engaged with the business? What do consumers want from our business?

 

 

Once the answers have been recorded and grouped into categories the next task is to clarify the meaning of each item and ensure that they are in the right category. If the meanings of each note is clarified it then become possible to remove any items which are clear duplicates. This discussion is really important because it will start to define what the key priorities are for the group.Having agreed the categories it is often useful to have a reflective dialogue. A dialogue is a listening space where each individual can choose to share their insights so far and any themes that are starting to emerge from the conversations so far. Inexperienced facilitators often miss this stage and move straight onto voting on the issues and this can mean that some of the more complex grey areas remain unexplored.

The next option might be to prioritise the issues and one very simple way of identifying which are the most important issues for the group is by using a technique called Multi Voting. I have tended to use multi coloured dots so that each person can record their vote on each item at the same time and not have to see their score recorded on a chart.

The number of dots can be allocated by taking the total number of categories eg 6 and allocating 6 points to the top choice, 5 to the next point…., this requires 16 dots per person. However if there are more categories than this and lots of people, then this can become very messy in which case it is often recommended that the number of items are divided by 3 and then dots allocated so there is enough to put one dot on 2/3rds of the items. I often propose that a maximum of 3 dots can be placed on each item.

 

Our attempt at multi voting

I wondered what other facilitators were doing on the topic and I discovered lots of different methods. One other method I liked was from an organisation called Dotmocracy and they have printed sheets you could use. I can see how these could be combined with the post it notes to really gain some insights from larger groups on the issues: http://www.dotmocracy.org/sheets

 

Then I came across this blog discussion on the use of dots and I realised that this was a really big area of debate amongst facilitators. http://www.albany.edu/cpr/gf/resources/Voting_with_dots.html

My conclusions are to stick with a process that makes pragmatic sense at the time and the facilitator will need to make a judgement call. All the attempts to make a science out of the number of dots looked flawed in practice and I am drawn back to the title of Tony Mann’s book: “Facilitation: an art, a science or skill or all three” and would conclude that this is a great example of “all three”

Facilitation – an Art, Science, Skill – or all three? Build your expertise in facilitation